


lucidum

by Spacedog



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Body Horror, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Nightmares, POV Sam Wilson, POV Steve Rogers, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 14:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8493466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacedog/pseuds/Spacedog
Summary: lucidum: (adj.); language of origin: latin; definition: 1. bright, shining.

or: the side-effects to being superhuman.





	

**Author's Note:**

> finally got this done, after about a year? two years? i intended for this to be done by halloween, but between all the balls i'm trying to keep in the air, that wasn't possible. oh well.
> 
> mentions of trauma are brief. the violence and body horror are typical mcu-level. may be somewhat inconsistent with canon.

**i.**

Steve first notices it when he’s alone. 

Those first few weeks after he’d been pumped full of Erksine’s serum were the most difficult. No one ever told him about how jarring it would be—still seeing himself a punkass kid with a big mouth, a bad set of lungs, and busted-up knuckles to boot—but existing as a big, brawny, impossibly healthy new _other_.  

It wasn’t easy. No one gave him a how-to guide to _becoming new_.  

But it wasn’t _just_ that he’d gone through some sort of hyper-enhanced second puberty. It wasn’t _just_ the sudden shock of becoming America’s superman that had him too exhausted and bone-tired to recognize some of the changes to his own body.  

It was all that _combined_ with his new role as a lab rat; all the disorienting changes of being a new person along with seemingly-endless tests that pushed him to the very edge of his newfound abilities. Being the only one of his kind put Steve _technically_ somewhere between an enlisted soldier and government property, and his temporary handlers made sure to take advantage of that legal murkiness. With all the money and man hours they spent developing the serum, they wanted to see what their army _could_ have given them.  

In the flurry of tests and top-secret meetings and simply relearning how to _live,_ it's understandable that Steve doesn’t notice some of the more subtle shifts in his own body until Erksine was long gone.  

It's understandable, then, that it isn’t until late one night, when he's finally able to go home to his now-too-small bed in his now-too-small apartment that Steve realizes that maybe he hadn’t been paying the most attention to the more minute changes he’d gone through. 

Understandable. Reasonable. But jarring—horrifying, even—nonetheless.  

\---

He's restless that first night home. Restless for the first time since the night before his procedure, restless for the first time since before he was injected with Erksine’s serum. The best scientists and engineers and geniuses the US government had to offer turned his body into something beyond good, beyond _thriving, even_ —and yet there he was, still unable to fall asleep, just like old times. 

The irony of it all wasn’t lost on him. 

With a heavy, frustrated sigh, Steve pulls himself up and out of bed. For a second, he braces himself for a dizzy spell, before remembering that this big, new body of his didn’t _get_ dizzy. His new body probably wouldn’t _get_ anything. It was a pleasant surprise, a regular little gift, as if his body were apologizing for each time that his newfound super-strength would send him accidentally breaking something that shouldn’t have been so easily destroyed.  

Steve was probably never going to get used to it. 

It takes three fewer steps to get to the washroom sink than Steve is used to. He's just about to get a glass of water, just something that might help him sleep again, when he notices it—a strange, eerie light at the edge of his vision, dull enough to overlook and small enough to miss in his foggy, sleep-deprived stumble to the sink. It's something that didn't belong in the reflection of his bathroom mirror; something alive, something _wild_ , almost—something definitively _not_ the dim lights of the city filtering through his dingy window. 

Frowning, Steve snaps his head up, taking a a double-take. He isn't prepared for what he sees — his own face staring back at him, his eyes shining opalescent and uncanny.  

A ragged breath escapes his lungs, slow and burning in his chest, as a familiar tightness begins to take hold. For the first time since the serum, Steve trembles. For the first time since the serum, he braces himself for an attack—an attack that he knows will never come. 

With his heart beating frantically in his chest, threatening to burst out from his throat and strangle him, Steve traces his reflection in the mirror, glowing eyes and all. That face, those eerie blue eyes, his father's nose, the none-too-fragile bones beneath unbruised skin—it's a face so familiar, but a face so strange, all the same.   

His health might have been perfect, but in that moment, Steve realizes—his new life, his new body, his new superhuman status and all the bombshells it would drop on him—it wasn’t going to be easy.  

It wasn’t going to be easy at all.

**ii.**

“You’re gonna need to do something about the lights,” Steve says, tilting his head up and squinting at the overhead rigging. 

“Yeah?” the director asks, sounding less than amused. This one was far less patient than the other directors Steve had worked with. To be fair, of all the silver screen directors he'd worked with, Steve couldn't say he was a big fan of any of them. Hollywood, Steve realized about two days into his stay, was _not_ for him. 

"Yeah, it's just," Steve says, suddenly feeling-self-conscious in front of the entire cast and crew, "My eyes. They do weird stuff sometimes. Especially in dim light like this, and 'specially from how you're angling 'em." 

There’s a silence. It feels like it lasts centuries. Eventually, mercifully, it's broken by some of the crew pulling the director aside to deliberate. The set is still deathly quiet, none of the other actors willing to risk their tenuous supporting roles alongside Steve. It's a silence soon blunted by the soft muttering from the crew, mitigating that awkwardness, if only slightly.

Steve shifts uncomfortably in his bright red stage boots as the people in charge continue to speak. There's more quiet deliberation between the director and some crew, different people this time. They speak low enough for Steve to know he's not meant to listen in, but not so silent that his supersoldier hearing can't pick up on what's being said. _Deadlines,_ they argue back and forth, _cost,_ they mutter. There's something about _getting that Brooklyn out of him,_ too, at which point, Steve hotly considers breaking contract and taking his leave.  

He tries to distract himself from the conversation happening in front of him, knowing that dwelling on it any more will make him feel worse. So he thinks about Bucky, half a world away. In Steve's imagination, Bucky's sitting in some grimy camp or dug deep into a muddy trench, writing letters to his Ma about the forests, about the food, about anything but the war. He would ask about Becca about his sisters, about how they were doing in doing in school. About the neighborhood, if it was any different with all the boys his age gone off across the sea. About Steve. 

He thinks about Bucky being there—five feet in front of him, instead of five thousand miles East. He thinks about how Bucky would react to him, looking like one of those dime-store comic book heroes in those bright blue shorts and tights. He imagines Bucky's face when he tells him that this getup is even brighter than his stage outfit, so the contrast will pick up on the screen. He imagines Bucky, drawling low and friendly and filled to the soul with the same Brooklyn his acting coach and agent and this _goddamn director_ want to drown out of him _,_ giving Steve grief for getting superpowers while leaving him some sort of _sidekick_. 

He imagines Bucky's laugh, bubbling warm and familiar, growing low as he rakes his eyes over Steve, standing there broader and stronger and taller, like some sort of goddamn twentieth century miracle. He imagines the way Bucky pinches his lower lip between his teeth, the way his eyes might darken the more he takes Steve in. He imagines Bucky's rough hands skimming over that gaudy, godawful show uniform, then running those familiar hands over Steve's now-hypersensitive skin— 

Steve jerks himself back to reality, his face burning up with shame. 

The director and crew are still deliberating when Steve refocuses. They're speaking louder now, but no one seems to notice he drifted off. It's almost comforting, not being the center of attention for once. Or it would be, if it weren't for the fact that it was clear that no one was willing to really _listen_ to him.  

_That_ one wasn't new. 

"Alright. How's this," the director says, turning back to acknowledge Steve after a few more minutes with the crew. "We shoot in this lighting and fix anything wrong afterwards. Who knows, maybe your condition won't act up. Probably won't. But to give you peace of mind, we'll take a look at the film and fix anything peculiar in it after. That sound okay to you, Cap?" 

Steve frowns, crossing his arms across his chest. He _knows_ it's going to act up. He knows his own damn body. 

At least, to an extent.  

But more than that, Steve knows how these sorts of guys work. It's not the first time he's been spoken down to like this. It's not the first time he's been lied to, and it sure as hell won't be the last. For all the reckless things he does, Steve is smarter than to take the director's offer on face-value.  

Growing up scrappy, sick, and poor taught him that. _Brooklyn_ taught him that.  

"You gonna take care of the crew through the re-shoots if it does?" he asks, an eyebrow quirked, but his voice precisely level. 

"Yeah. Yeah, sure," the director replies, flippant.  

Somehow, Steve doesn't believe him. 

\---

A week and a half later, Steve sits in front of the director, feeling five-foot-nothing and indignant all over again. Rumor had it that after the director reviewed the footage, he decided that in order to meet his vision—and make up for some technical issues that showed up on film—the entire cast and crew had to work extra long. And for whatever reason, no one would get paid. 

That rumor, everyone later learned, was true.  

And Steve, holy terror he was, was _not_ having that.  

"There's just no way around it, Cap. We're going to have to shoot the entire thing again. And we're on a tight deadline, see, so I'm going to need you here by five—" the director starts, sounding already exasperated, only a minute or so into their conversation. 

At least the feeling was mutual. 

"Stop, stop, hang on. With all due respect, sir," Steve says, only a _little_ sarcastic, "You can't keep everyone here twice as long and not pay _any_ of us. If you want, take my salary to pay the rest of 'em. Me, I'm gonna be okay. But some of these fellas? They've got folks to take care of. They've got families. That just ain't fair." 

The director breathes a heavy sigh. Steve prickles. 

_"_ And what _I'm_ saying is we need to get this done. I don't know how they're directing you when you're on stage, but this isn't stage, son. See, making movies? Not cheap. I've got about two thousand feet of film just for this. About twelve hundred of that? I can't use. And today, I get a call from some general in the Army, calling on behalf of some branch of the US government that up until now, I'd never even heard of, telling me they want _all_ of it destroyed. _I_ still need to make a picture. What am I supposed to do? How's that fair for _me?_ " 

"Look," Steve says, his voice firm, "I said at the very beginning, I have a thing. A thing that happens with my eyes. You told me it wasn't gonna show on film, that if it did, you could fix it, you promised—" 

The director takes a deep breath and opens his mouth to say something—something none-too-kind, judging from his expression—and Steve readies himself for the inevitable verbal onslaught. With a tilt of his head, Steve steels his jaw and calmly lets the fight back into his eyes. Somehow, he feels better, slipping into that fighty little stance. It's familiar. Comfortable. Brooklyn-bred. And just as he's ready to take whatever the director is about to let out, that piano-wire tension is snapped; the situation is de-escalated, miraculously, by someone at the door.  

“Rogers.” 

Steve turns to face his Hail Mary: his agent, smiling that professional, less-than-friendly smile. Like the soldier he is, like the soldier he _pretends_ to be, Steve shifts quickly, now at rapt attention. “Sir.”  

“I need you to come with me. And bring your coat,” his agent says. He, too, sounds military. He must have been. No way would the SSR let some civilian be in charge of their most precious asset. When his agent speaks, Steve obliges. With a quick nod and a smug smile as a goodbye, Steve scuffles out of that dingy Hollywood office, feeling, of all things, relieved.  

If he, a grown adult, ever has to sit in another office, being talked down by an old man like some sort of wayward child, it will be far too soon. 

“Guess I should thank you for pulling me outta there,” Steve sighs, once they’ve got enough distance between them and the director’s office for him to feel safe. “Really appreciate it.” 

“Got more good news for you, too,” his agent says. His tone is light, but typically humorless. “We’ve got you a new gig.” 

“War movie again?” Steve asks, trying not to sound like he'd just gotten sick. 

“Stage," replies his agent. "USO.”  

The USO. Camp Shows. Steve pauses, taking time to fully parse the words.  

"What are you saying?" Steve asked, twisting his coat in his big hands.  

"I'm saying pack your bags, Rogers," his agent says, clapping him on the back, "We're leaving for Italy tomorrow afternoon. They want you on an overseas tour." 

Steve nods, following obediently, somehow feeling lighter and more hopeful than he'd felt throughout his whole US tour. Maybe he just wasn't fit for Hollywood, but after hearing the news, Steve somehow felt that going to the front would earn him another shot, another chance at an actual _purpose—_ something he hadn't felt since he ran through New York. Slow as it was to come, things were starting to change. 

Captain America was going to war. 

**iii.**  

Europe, of course, was hardly a field day. It wasn't the constant action of the radio shows and adventure books he and Bucky had grown up with, either. It was something different altogether—something more _real._  

There was a lot of talking. There was a lot of watching and a lot of waiting. There were bitter winter weeks spent in the trenches and days spent hiking the thick European woods. There were long, summer nights spent laughing around the fire and there were endless tragedies. 

There were nightmares. 

And ever since he’d saved Bucky from certain death, ever since Schmidt peeled his own face off and tried to convince Steve to join him and leave the rest of humanity behind, Steve found himself haunted by one dream, one recurring nightmare that sunk its teeth into him and _pulled_. 

\--- 

It always started the same. 

He's home again. He always dreams of going home. It's sometime after realizing the serum had its own share of unintended side-effects. Steve is standing in front of his dingy bathroom mirror, clutching the sides of his sink like a lifeline, his grip strong enough to crush the porcelain beneath his fingers like soft chalk. He can’t move, he can't speak—all he can do is try to _breathe_. It feels like a panic attack and an asthma attack and pneumonia and drowning all rolled into one; all somehow compounding upon one another.

As Steve struggles to fill his lungs, his heart thrums a staccato rhythm frantically in his chest, painful in its rapidity. Pure, primal _fear_ has locked him in place, and like a deer caught staring into a pair of quick-approaching headlights, he is unable to look away, unable to escape, unable to do much else but try, however fruitlessly, to scream. 

Because staring back at him out at him from the inky black darkness is the Red Skull, his sinewy red lips twisted into a parody of a smile, and illuminated by a single light source: two familiar, shining eyes, sunken deep into the hollowness of his skull.  

Those glowing eyes, those singular, eerie eyes, match Steve’s eyes.  

They _are_ his eyes, he inevitably, horrifically, _always_ comes to realize.  

And like an avalanche overtaking him, Steve suddenly recognizes the bone structure of the awful, stripped skull looking back at him all too well.  

\--- 

For a while, every night that Steve is lucky enough to catch even an hour of sleep, the nightmare comes back.  

Every night, like clockwork, Steve wakes up in a cold sweat, a whimper half-formed in his mouth and his whole body trembling. For months, Steve spends night after night feeling raw and powerless and secretly wishing—selfish as it was—that Bucky would crawl onto his lumpy cot to lie with him. That Bucky would hold him tight and tell him, he _wasn't_ a monster; that he couldn't be. That Steve was many things, but a monster not among them—his commander, their leader, an idiot who didn't know subtlety if it slapped him across the face. His best guy. 

He wanted Bucky to tell him that everything was going to be okay.  

For months, Steve watches Bucky in the dead of night, wanting nothing more than to reach across that gulf between them, to shake him awake, to ask for that little comfort, to—just once—indulge his own burning, selfish little needs. 

He never does. And he couldn’t ask to.  

Not when Bucky is battling monsters of his own.

**iv.**

Their campfire is a warm little miracle when they finally set up camp, having trudged through miles of thick winter snow. The Howling Commandos, on their way to their next mission, found a small clearing tucked away into a forest in Austria, just large enough to set up a few tents, but just hidden enough so they don't have to worry about being seen. When night falls, all the men not on patrol gather close, out of personal, emotional necessity. They're all tired and hungry and homesick as the holidays near. Even Captain America, their fearless, reckless leader, finds himself wondering what it's like back home. 

That's how he ends up with Morita, Jones, and Bucky, having a impromptu team-building moment as Falsworth, Dugan, and Dernier keep watch, stalwart as always, even through the bitter cold. 

"Never got this cold in Fresno," Morita laughs, curled tight into himself to fight against the chill. He never seems to be warm enough. Steve files that away in his mind, wondering if he could requisition Morita a thicker coat. "You know, it wasn't 'till I was over here that I saw snow?" 

"No kidding," Bucky murmurs, sprawled out next to him, straight across from Steve. His fingers itch to draw Bucky like that, languid as a house cat, lit up only by the crackle of the campfire and the moon filtering in through the trees. 

Morita nods. "Yeah. The other guys in my unit were whining and moaning and giving nothing but grief, but deep down? I was kind of excited." 

"No wonder you can't handle the weather," Jones jokes, bookmarking his place in his paperback with a tiny twig snapped off one of those skyscraper-tall trees. He's been picking up books wherever they go. If there are books somewhere, he'll take one, so long as he has room in his pack to carry them. This one's some sort of weird, surreal novel from the 20s. All in French. Steve can probably requisition a book or two for him, too.  

Morita makes a face. "It's cold!" 

"Says the guy who asks if snow's coming any time it dips below 'bout sixty degrees," Bucky adds, shooting Morita a smug little smirk before taking a sip from his canteen.  

"Come on now. Play nice," Steve chastises in his _Captain America_ voice, "We might have to teach him to survive in the cold, but Morita teaches _us_ stuff, too, you know. Like if you wanna make a few quick bucks, give 'em a few shots of liquid courage and ask him if he wants to play cards. That one's better than FDR at getting money back into the hands of men and women 'round the country, guaranteed. Hell, I'd go on stage to sell that, if I weren't sitting here with all you." 

"I'm reporting you to the brass," Morita threatens jokingly, trying hard to bite back a laugh as he sobers up to mimic Colonel Phillips, capturing the old man's expression perfectly. "Attention, Colonel Phillips, from one Jim Morita: It is with great solemnity that I must report misconduct from one of your officers. I understand I risk insubordination here, but frankly, sir, Captain America is being a complete jackass to me. He and the other New York guys? Totally no regards to group cohesion. The unit is in _anarchy_. I await resolution to this issue accordingly." 

They break out in laughter, almost loud enough to worry about enemy troops hearing them. 

"Bud, if you could stop Steve with a letter, I'd have my own goddamn library," Bucky says, shaking his head and grinning that handsome, movie star grin. Steve drinks in that grin like it's the last time he'll see Bucky smile like that. Its appearances were becoming fewer and further between.          

But just as he began to privately enjoy the feeling of warmth fluttering and unfolding in his chest, Steve sees something that pulls him out of that moment sharp enough to give him whiplash.  

It's quick, barely there—if Steve blinked, we would have missed it. But he knew what he saw, he knew what it _had_ to be. Bucky's eyes, for the briefest second, picked up the low light and reflected it back, giving his eyes, if only for that moment, that impossible, inhuman sheen.  

It was like lightning.  

It was like _Steve._  

He couldn't even begin to parse how he felt about it. He began to panic. Maybe something happened in Azzano. Maybe something happened to Bucky. Maybe something was _still happening_. Dread, exactly like the kind he'd felt when he pulled Bucky off the gurney at fateful night, took a hold on Steve. 

And if he's guilty of anything, it's wearing his heart on his sleeve. 

"What's with the face?" Bucky asks, that brilliant smile dropping quick as it came.  

"What face? I'm not making a face," Steve says, lying through his teeth, "What about you? Are you—uh. Do you feel okay?" 

The expression Bucky makes is unreadable. "Uh, yeah, I'm feeling okay, Rogers. The hell's gotten into you?" 

"Just wanna know how you're doing. Wanna know how you're feeling, s'all," he says, keeping his voice even and measured, "You sure you feel okay?" 

Morita and Jones have fallen silent. That comfortable camaraderie has given way to a tense, awkward silence. Bucky furrows his brow, staring at Steve, as if trying to get a read on him—as if trying to force the truth out of him through willpower and a mean look alone. Eventually, he sighs, exasperated, and gets to his feet, never once breaking eye contact with Steve.  

“Come on,” Bucky says, his voice low and level, sending a chill down Steve’s spine. “Let’s go for a walk.” 

\---  

“Okay. Tell me the truth this time, and I swear on my Ma, don't you try to do that dumb act with me. What’s wrong, Steve?” Bucky asks, once they’re far out in that fuckall German forest, the warm orange light of their camp a mere blip in the distance.  

There’s a sheen of ice against the pines that glows eerie and unreal in the moonlight. It’s cold out there—colder than any broken-furnace winter either of them lived through an ocean and a lifetime ago—but Steve’s new metabolism keeps him warm. For his part, Bucky, save for those heavy, foggy breaths, doesn’t seem all too affected by the cold, either. 

Out in the middle of nowhere on a bitterly cold winter night, for a rare moment in his life, Steve's finding it hard to speak.  

“Your eyes—I—” he starts. His tongue feels leaden in his mouth. 

Bucky turns to face Steve, looking offended and furious. “My eyes _what,_ Rogers?” 

Even if Bucky hadn’t interrupted him, hadn’t confronted him about this, Steve wouldn’t have been able to say anything other than what had already been said. Bucky was a sniper. Probably one of the _best_ snipers the world would ever know. No matter what he got from Steve's half-answer, that fill-in-the-blank suggestion alone was implicating enough.  

“Bucky, I'm just—after Azzano—you need—you need to get checked out again, I'm worried—" 

“You don't _need_ to be worried, Steve," Bucky interrupts angrily, his voice a sharp hiss against his teeth. He looks up at Steve, looking the same sort of controlled furious that Steve knows all too well. It seems sharper now, more like a coming storm, more subdued and somehow more dangerous. But maybe Steve just chose not to see it before.

Sharper or not, Steve hates when Bucky's angry like this. He hates when Bucky's anger burns so hot it turns into paradoxical cold. He wishes Bucky would yell, he wishes Bucky would scream. At least he could yell back. At least they would both get a chance to hash things out. At least it would hurt less. But this? It's like needles, thousands of them, and Steve doesn’t know what to say.  

"I don’t need to be _looked after_ , Steve. I’m not made outta spun glass. Don't worry about me. You don't need to worry about me."  

He runs his hand over his face, through his hair, looking tired.  

"Look. I’m following your dumb ass 'till I’m six feet in the ground or 'till this war is won. But if we’re gonna do this, if it's gonna be you and me dragging each other through the fires of hell, I need you to just—stop. Stop worrying over me. Stop babying me, just—just have my back, alright? I’m _fine._ Whatever happened in that Hydra base is done and over with,” Bucky growls, his voice a low murmur. “So just—drop it, okay?" 

Steve notices something in Bucky’s face then, something that Bucky tried all too well to hide, and that Steve had been all-too bullheaded to see. Mixed in with that anger and frustration—emotions that may have been rightly-placed—was fear. It was the haunting kind of fear, the one that held onto someone and shook them to the bone. The kind of fear that never really went away.  

Bucky, Steve was just now starting to realize, was just as afraid—of their argument, of the war itself, of the sudden mix-up of their dynamic, of whatever horrors he’d encountered in that Hydra facility, of the sheer possibility that Steve’s fears held some weight—as he was angry.  

And if anyone could even come _close_ to understanding that frustration, it was Steve.  

He wants to hold Bucky. He wants to _be held_. He wants nothing more than to touch Bucky, to comfort him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay. That it was all, in the end, going to be okay.  

But he doesn't. He _couldn't_. Instead, Steve simply nods, gravely, trying his damndest to show Bucky that he's taking him seriously. After a while, after a moment to let the world go soft and calm and still, Steve sighs what must have been the heaviest sigh of his life.  

“Okay, Bucky,” Steve murmurs eventually, “Okay.” 

If Bucky has something else to say, he never brings it up. If Steve has anything else to say, if he could even begin to articulate it, he bites his tongue. Instead, they both let the moment hang, imposing even in the quiet, before walking back to camp in a tense silence.   

Sometimes, down in the trenches, or up half-hidden in a sniper’s nest, for a small, split second, Steve is convinced he sees a glimpse of Bucky’s eyes glowing again, bright and haunting. 

He thinks nothing of it.

**v.**

It’s seventy years and a lifetime later when Steve sees the glow of those eyes again. 

Nick Fury is bleeding out on Steve's floor. Sharon—Agent Thirteen, as she turns out to be—is calling for backup and doing her best to stem the bleeding. There's a rush in Steve's ears that drowns out the panic happening not a foot from him. With every heartbeat, his entire body screams, pushing him to take action. _F_ _ight._ Beat. _D_ _o your_ _duty_. Beat.  

_This is what you were made_ _to do._  

"Tell them I'm in pursuit," Steve growls, and before Sharon can tell him not to, before Sharon can try and stop him _,_ Steve's already on the move, plowing through anything and everything in his way. He's unstoppable as he hunts the shooter down, leaving chaos and destruction and explosions of broken glass behind him, all in the effort for that one goal, that one single-minded mission: _stop Nick's killer._  

The shot was a damn-near impossible blow, vicious in its violence and surgical in its precision. Steve is not Captain America in that moment, shield be damned; he's not Steve Rogers, even. In that moment, Steve is nothing but anger and retribution and justice concentrated and congealed into one superhuman being. He hyperfocuses on the shooter running a level above him, pushing through the haze of hurt and rage to never let Nick's assassin drop out of his sight. He's fast, almost fast enough for Steve to struggle to keep up.  

Almost.  

Steve bolts through the office building at breakneck speed. It's intense, even for him. When he arrives at a corner, he ricochets himself off a pristine office wall, knowing he can't waste precious seconds slowing down to pivot. The white double-doors fall just as easy. They stood no chance to a supersoldier on the hunt. Few things do. 

The sprint down the length of the hall takes seconds, but Steve sees the shooter's bulk drop down to the neighboring roof and knows he's running out of time. He throws his body through plate glass, shield-first, but is still peppered with wayward shards. There's no time to think about the sting, not when he's got a healing factor and the shooter is mere feet away from disappearing. The second Steve is back on his feet, he wastes no time. He throws the shield, watching the vibranium slice through the night air, angled to drop back into a sprint— 

—only to watch the shooter catch the shield without even missing a beat.  

They make eye contact for a moment. It's brief, barely enough time to register. Barely enough time to breathe. But Steve sees it in the shooter's eyes, that familiar, feral sheen. 

Steve can barely string the thought together before his shield comes hurtling back at him, sending him sliding back about ten feet and knocking the breath out of him. Nick's shooter was strong. He was fast. He had a metal arm and could see in the dark. 

He was a supersoldier.  

And Steve was the only person who could take the shooter on. Steve was the only person with the ability—with the _obligation_ —to stop him. He might not have known the identity of the shooter. He might not even know why the shooter wanted Nick dead.  

But the shooter was unstoppable to anyone else but Steve.  

That much, he knew, with absolute certainty. 

**(+1)**

When Hydra fell, S.H.I.E.L.D. burned along with it. 

When Hydra fell, the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes, whatever man left in the wreckage of nearly eight decades of disaster, was free. 

He ran. He found a life. He fought. He let himself die and become reborn a third time. He and Steve burned the world for one another, not for the first time, and knowing them, they would probably do it again. 

Now there he was—Bucky Barnes, or the Winter Soldier, or whoever he was in-between—again among the living, sitting in front of Sam, cleaned up and looking like something approximating a gentleman, shoving what might have been his sixth or seventh pancake into his mouth and showing no signs of slowing down.  

Supersoldiers. 

"So, you don't have your D.C. apartment anymore. Since the whole—Hydra thing. And Ultron thing. And the Zemo thing. You two got a place to stay?" Sam asks, cutting into a piece of his turkey bacon omelet, " _Please_ don't tell me you're staying at the Motel 6. I'm pretty sure it'd be a federal crime to let Captain America stay in a Motel 6." 

“We just got here, so we, uh—" Steve starts, "We actually, technically, don’t have a place to stay.”  

Sam looks over his eggs at Steve, raising his eyebrows. 

“Are you telling me that you didn’t buy me brunch just because you like me?” Sam asks, “That you're just trying to win me over with breakfast food from the best diner in all of D.C.?"  

Steve beams at him, sheepish in that impossibly charming way of his. 

Sam snorts, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I see how it is."  

“I mean, only if it’s not too much trouble,” Steve replies, peeking over his coffee—black, no sugar, and in Sam’s opinion, totally undrinkable. "I'd be fun. But I don't wanna impose. We _could_ do a hotel." 

"Or a safe house," Bucky adds, through half a mouthful of pancakes, "I know a ton of safe houses in the area. Totally free. Probably don't even have to worry about bedbugs." 

Sam rolls his eyes dramatically. "You stay in a safe house, you're automatically in trouble again. Besides—didn't you just get back from an international incident? Isn't that why you're here, to testify about what happened?" 

"Nah," Bucky says, lolling his head towards Sam with a smolder that really shouldn't have been so natural to someone who knows twelve different ways to kill a grown man with a napkin. "Just wanted to see your pretty face, 's all." 

"You're gonna get that pardon revoked if you keep that up," Sam says, pointing at Bucky with his fork. He winks at Sam before digging back into his breakfast, wolfish as Steve. 

"Okay. You can stay at my place," Sam says, as if he even had to think on it. As if he hadn't stayed with Steve more times than he could count, as if he hadn't spent hours alone with Bucky on missions, road trips, and overnight flights, making peace. Their homes were always open between the three of them—and if he didn't love his city so much, if he didn't see creeping gentrification and think _stay and fight,_ Sam would have taken them up on their offer and moved in with them before they could say, _Goodbye, D.C._  

"Barnes here is cooking, though. And I get veto power over the TV. House Wilson is not a democracy, and if I see a _single_ glimpse of HGTV, the hammer's coming down," Sam says definitively. Steve and Bucky glance at each other and nod, chewing down the last of their food and finishing off their coffee.  

Just like that, it's agreed. Simple. Easy. Painless, if Sam were to ignore the sheer _volume_ of food he'd just witnessed the two of them eat.  

Steve picks up the tab when they leave. Between his and Bucky's respective breakfasts, Sam was sure that they'd packed away what could have been Sam's breakfasts for at least a _week._ And they didn't even seem phased. 

_Supersoldiers_. Sam wasn’t surprised in the least.  

\--- 

It's exactly a quarter 'till _too goddamn early_ when Sam wakes up from half a night of restless sleep. These nights happened sometimes. Not the nights where he would wake up from a cold sweat, reliving those painful moments before Riley was killed. He had those dreams every now and then, but they were much more uncommon than when he first got home. He was doing a lot better now. But he still had nights like this—restless nights, nights where for some reason, his mind wouldn't let him sleep. 

Sam pads downstairs, feeling hazy and exhausted. He wants nothing more than a cold glass of water and whatever's left of the night's sleep. Maybe an aspirin, if the pounding in his head doesn't dissipate. Sam gets all the way to the doorway when he hears voices, low and intimate, coming from the kitchen. 

"—'m here for you. Always gonna be here for you. You need me, you've got me. Just say the word. No matter what. No matter anything. I promise. End of the line, remember that?" he hears, coming quiet from his kitchen. Sam recognizes that voice, that little New York lilt. Steve's voice is open and sincere.  

Looks like Sam wasn't the only one having trouble sleeping. 

"Yeah. I know. I know," Bucky murmurs, exhausted and near-inaudible from where Sam is standing at the kitchen entrance. He might be in his own home, but knowing the weight of this conversation—and being the polite gentleman that he is—Sam raps his knuckles on the wall to indicate his presence before he joins them. As if to say, _my war's eaten me up just the same. I can't sleep, too_. 

"Oh. Hi, Sam," says Steve, softly. Then, it happens, quicker than it has the right to.  

Not turning the lights on was a mistake. 

Steve and Bucky look up at the same time, perfectly in sync. They're angled perfectly in Sam's kitchen to catch the low light of the moon filtering in through the blinds, and when they look at Sam, their eyes shine eerie in the late night darkness, two pairs of wolf-stares and smiles that, though unintentionally, in that context, are less reminiscent of friendship and more of _bared teeth._   

Sam, for his part, only lets out a little scream. 

"Whoa, whoa, hey, hey. It's okay," Steve says, in an attempt to be comforting, quickly realizing what must be happening. Bucky darts across the kitchen to flip the light switch, and Steve touches Sam's shoulder, apologetically, "It's us. It's just us. You're safe." 

"What the _hell_ was that?" Sam asks, maybe a little too loud for one-something in the morning. 

"Side-effect of the serum," Bucky answers, matter-of-factly. He pokes around Sam's fridge and quickly pours water from the Brita into Sam's favorite mug, before setting on the counter gently, just within arm's reach.  

"We've got just about perfect night vision," Steve continues for Bucky, who has moved on to make a pot of tea. "But in certain lights, under certain conditions, we've got—well. These." 

He waves his hands in front of his eyes, pantomiming the concept of _otherworldly sheen._  

"Just think of it kind of like we're cats," Bucky says with a shrug, as he pulls the box of chamomile out from its home in Sam's _condiments and things_ drawer. "You sister's got cats, right? Same thing." 

Sam huffs, still struggling to regain feeling in his fingers. "My sister's cats aren't six-foot-two and _huge_ , dude. Damn near scared the life out of me." 

"Sorry," Steve says, apologetically scrunching his big shoulders in a shrug, "Can't help it." 

"Yeah, well. You're lucky you're charming," Sam sighs. His nerves are at a level he can deal with again, so he takes a sip of water from his mug, though it still takes an effort to maintain his breathing. Supersoldiers. Goddamn _supersoldiers._  

"It only ever happens under the right light. Maybe one out of ten times it'll happen. One outta twenty, even," Steve continues. Bucky has three more mugs on the counter, three more of Sam's favorites. 

"You do milk or sugar with your tea?" Bucky asks. Sam shoots him a look.  

"With chamomile?" Sam asks, totally disgusted. "No way." 

Steve shrugs, seemingly guilty. Because _of course he would be._ Of course he would do nothing with his coffee but put _cream and sugar_ in his chamomile tea. Of course.  

"What can I say? It tastes good." 

Bucky offers a mug of warm chamomile to Sam _—without_ any additions, as it was intended to be—which he gratefully accepts. "So what about you, Barnes? You put milk and sugar in your sleepytime tea? Like some goddamn _barbarian?_ " 

"Bagged tea's bagged tea," Bucky says with a shrug, stirring milk and honey into the two remaining cups, "Gotta make it taste good somehow." 

Fiends, both of them. 

The tea does good to calm the three of them down, easing the mood from Sam's traumatic supersoldier experience earlier. They stand around in Sam's kitchen and talk—about work, about sports, about politics, about everything under the sun and nothing in particular. It feels nice. And though none of them ever bring it up, though not a single one of them ever acknowledges it, talking with one another—not about their anxieties or nightmares, but simply talking about _anything—_ helps fight those demons off, at least for one more night. 

They move to Sam's living room eventually, their conversation slowing down significantly once they get comfortable. Bucky is the first to give in to sleep, slumping against Steve's shoulder. Steve curls his arm around Bucky's waist, only for Bucky to shift after about ten minutes of that, moving to sprawl across Sam's couch—and Steve—like the world's heaviest, most dangerous throw blanket. 

"Sam?" Steve asks eventually. Bucky is curled into his lap, looking younger and gentler than he ever does awake. It's sweet.  

"Mmm?"  

"You mean a lot to me, Sam. A whole lot. I don't say it enough, and I know we don't really—well, okay, we _don't_ talk about this," Steve says quietly, absentmindedly playing with Bucky's hair like a teenager in love. To think, they were considered the two most dangerous fugitives in the world—shoot-to-kill orders and everything. "But I care about you. So you come to me if you need it, alright?"  

"Thanks, man," Sam says softly. Softer, even, than he intended for it to be. "Thanks." 

Steve beams, stifling a yawn. 

"Now get outta here. You know old men've gotta get their sleep," he says, batting Sam on the arm, about as light as a supersoldier's play-punch can be. Steve's natural accent is out again, his vowels dipping fully into that long, Brooklyn beat. 

"Pssh. Old men, my ass. Whatever," Sam says with an eyeroll, turning back towards the staircase. "Like you need more energy to make me look bad at the gym. Had someone ask me if you were my trainer once. _Then_ they asked me if I wanted to switch to yoga." 

Steve laughs, tilting his head back. Little peals of laughter—giggles, really—shake Steve's entire frame. And the couch. Sam's surprised it doesn't wake up Bucky. 

"I'm glad my suffering is hilarious to you," Sam replies, deadpan. "Now I'm gonna go cry myself to sleep." 

Steve laughs, just a little thing this time, and Sam can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks. "Good night, Sam." 

"Good night, Steve." 

Sam, true to his word, _does_ go to bed not long after that, the panic and horror of seeing his two best friends with eyes like animals having long passed. His bed feels too soft, still, and he knows nights like this will happen again, even when Steve and Bucky aren't around. 

He sleeps soundly late into the morning, even still. 

**Author's Note:**

> i originally had this tagged as the steve/sam/bucky ot3, but because nothing is outright stated other than steve's brain wandering to dirty thoughts about bucky, i wanted to err on the side of caution and not clog the tag.
> 
> thanks to [divya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flash0flight) and [jackie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flyicarus/profile) for betaing.
> 
> title comes from [tapetum lucidum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapetum_lucidum), the structure that allows some animals night vision and eyeshine. 
> 
> next up: NaNo, if everything goes well.


End file.
